Carl Roe, Executive Director

The new head of the Game Commission appeared before the House Game and Fisheries Committee this week with some grim news—the Commission may not have sufficient budget reserves to pay its bills passed July 1 if it does not receive a license fee increase.

“For fiscal year 2006-07, assuming that we balance the budget next year, we have insufficient funds to meet requirements on July 1,” said Carl Roe, Executive Director of the Commission. “I am sure you are concerned about what would happen if we do not get increased resources.”

Roe said the Commission would have to further reduce programs and people at a time when 10 percent of the Wildlife Conservation Officer district positions are already vacant.

The annual report submitted to the Committee noted hunting license sales were down 6 percent over the previous year.

Promising to increase communication with its partners, sportsmen’s clubs and the public on critical issues like deer management, Roe pointed to habitat improvement, the development of the new point-of-sale system for selling licenses and the recent environmental bond issue as highlights of the last year.

Roe reported $5 million of new Growing Greener II funds were spent by the Commission to purchase bulldozers and other heavy equipment to be used in habitat improvement projects throughout the state. A priority this year will be to address the Commission’s high hazard dams.

Private landowners will soon be able to benefit from the Game Commission’s experience in habitat improvement through a new set of online tools.

“In the future, we plan to unveil information on our website that landowners can use to construct food plots, plan tree and shrub plantings and prepare other blueprints for habitat improvement of their land whether they own one-half of an acre or 100,000 acres,” said Roe.

“We need to increase the public’s awareness that their activities and involvement can have an impact. We need to engage the general public to assist in habitat development whether it is backyard, municipal parks, major conservation projects or large privately-owned tracts of land,” Roe continued.

The Commission has also had success with managing non-game species like the Indiana bat and the reintroduction of bald eagles, peregrine falcons, otters and fishers.

Roe said the Commission is continuing its efforts to gather information from a variety of sources including hunters and a Citizens Advisory Task Force to help it shape deer management policies.

The Commission Board is expected to get recommendations on deer management from the Citizens Task Force and have a draft urban deer management plan at its April meeting.

In closing, Roe said, “We need to stand together and not let immediate individual program issues get in the way of our long-term goals of managing all wildlife resources and insuring our grandchildren have the same opportunity to pass on our love for the resource and our hunting and trapping heritage to their grandchildren.”

A copy of Carl Roe’s testimony and the 2005 Annual Report are available online.

2/10/2006